When 17-year-old Assol Trubetskaya was detained at an unsanctioned protest in Omsk in September, the authorities seemed to be expecting her.

"The OMON [riot police] officers grabbed me and dragged me into a van," she told RFE/RL. "A woman from the Juvenile Affairs Department was already sitting in there."

In interviews with RFE/RL's Russian Service, teens across Russia told similar stories of how their lives were turned upside down after they were detained on September 9 during a nationwide wave of protests against a government plan to raise retirement ages.

More than 1,000 demonstrators were detained in more than 30 towns and cities during those protests, which were organized by opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

Perhaps surprisingly for a protest over pensions, many of the demonstrators were young people, and the authorities seemed to pay them particular attention.

"The police have stooped to a new low by treating young, peaceful protesters as if they were criminals," Marie Struthers, Amnesty International's director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said at the time. "This is shameless and heartbreaking."

Yegor Beschastnov: "The commission wasn't interested in my side."

"In Samara, City Day coincided with the march against the pension reform," said 10th-grade student Yegor Beschastnov. "I asked the police officers who were on the street if it would be all right for me to walk around with a [Russian] flag. They said it would be. I walked around my city waving the Russian flag. And soon I received a summons to appear before the police."

Like the other young people RFE/RL spoke to, Beschastnov appeared before a juvenile-affairs commission and was charged with the administrative offense of participating in an unsanctioned demonstration.

"I was amused to see an Orthodox priest was the head of the commission," he said.

The commission fined him 10,000 rubles ($152) for allegedly disobeying a police order to disperse, he added.

"The commission wasn't interested in my side of what happened," Beschastnov said. "I had the impression that they had made their decision in advance. The video did not show me shouting any slogans. I was convicted of walking around town waving a Russian flag."

The authorities seemed to pay particular attention to young people, such as this teen who was detained by police in Moscow on September 9.

Nikita Chudinov is a teenage volunteer at Navalny's office in Perm.

"Some of the protesters and I were marching toward the World War II monument," he said of the September 9 events in his city. "The police began to surround us. We understood that we were about to be detained, so we began singing the Russian national anthem. Before we got halfway through, they grabbed us and pushed us into vans. One police officer knocked the Russian flag out of my hands and walked on it."

Chudinov said he was interrogated at a police station without the presence of his parents. Officers, he said, asked him repeatedly if the U.S. State Department had paid him to participate in the demonstration.

In the end, he was charged with participating in an illegal protest and his mother was charged with failure to comply with her responsibilities as a parent.

A juvenile-affairs commission convicted him and fined him 5,000 rubles ($76). The charge against his mother was dropped.

A young boy is led away by police in St. Petersburg on September 9.

Chudinov said his appearance before the commission caused him problems at school.

"I had to bring a notice from the commission to school in order to excuse my absence," he explained, "so I had to explain why I'd been called to the commission. My class leader explained that the situation in the country is very tense and they are putting people like me in prison."

He added that "a class monitor" told him to remove a pro-Navalny button.

"She's a big patriot who had previously gone to military school. We don't see eye to eye," he said. "She told me that people say Navalny is a spy and she warned me that patriots support [President Vladimir Putin]."

Pavel Averochkin: "Schools are supposed to be outside of politics."

Pavel Averochkin, a 16-year-old in Penza, told RFE/RL that his mother was summoned to his school after his detention on September 9.

"But there were police there and they forced her to sign a protocol on failure to meet her parental responsibilities," Averochkin said. "She didn't know what she was signing. They told her it was just informative."

He said they had since been summoned before a juvenile-affairs commission.

"I'm a top-rate student," Averochkin continued. "My mother has a certificate from my school attesting to how well she raised me.... I'm upset because the school let the police meet with my mother in the deputy director's office. Schools are supposed to be outside of politics. After that, social workers came to our apartment, but we didn't let them in.

"My mother worries that my civic activism will make it hard for me to get into a university," he said. "But she doesn't forbid me from going to protests and understands that we have become victims of political oppression."

Timur Valiullin: "Two guys in civilian clothes came to my home."

Timur Valiullin, a teenage Navalny volunteer in Khabarovsk, was also detained while waving a Russian flag on September 9.

"They asked me if I wanted things to be like they are in Ukraine," he said, describing his interrogation by police.

A juvenile-affairs commission fined him 10,000 rubles ($152) after a hearing that he said he could not attend due to illness.

"Then two guys in civilian clothes came to my home," Valiullin said. "They said they were police. They told my parents that if I keep going to protests, I'll become a criminal. They used both carrots and sticks. For instance, they said that if I stop being involved in politics, then everything will be fine."

They also told the Valiullins that taking a Russian flag to a protest was prohibited.

"They wanted my parents to forbid me from attending protests," he said. "But my parents let me do what I feel I have to."

Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson based on reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Darina Shevchenko